


Paved with Intentions

by Miss_sabre



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post Season 1, Short One Shot, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-28 05:20:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11411055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_sabre/pseuds/Miss_sabre
Summary: Matt tries to discover what's bothering Karen, but untangling her secrets isn't so simple.A post-season 1 fic.





	Paved with Intentions

It had been two weeks since Fisk had been dealt with, but Karen didn’t sound any better. Oh, she sounded chirpier, and Matt could feel her up-beat and bouncy energy around the office. She made their days at Nelson and Murdock’s considerably more pleasant, and she kept them on task. But underneath the act, he thought he felt some deeper trouble moving within her. It was just a feeling, but it reminded him all too much of the inner turmoil he had gone through as they fought Fisk. At first Matt thought Karen was still wary because she felt the same thing he did. Something about Fisk remained, even though he was locked up at Ryker’s Island. Matt thought maybe Karen also felt something still moving, bubbling under the surface of Hell’s Kitchen. But no, that wasn’t what was bothering her—at least that was what his instincts told him. Whatever it was seemed to be getting worse as the days passed.

He wasn’t sure if Foggy also guessed something was off about Karen. She always tried harder when Foggy was in the room. When it was just Matt and Karen, she let the act slip. She couldn’t guess that Matt would know how she slumped over in her chair, or how she stared out the window for hours. As usual, Matt felt the conflicting pangs of doubt. On the one hand, use every tool at your disposal. The fact that they underestimate you is their problem. Use it. That had been one of the first lessons Stick had drilled into Matt and it was one he had easily embraced. Anything that made it easier to help people had to be used. On the other hand…

He could still hear Foggy’s accusation, feel the ripples of recoil from him. _You listened to her heart beat without her permission?_

_And what was I supposed to do, ignore what I knew?_ He retorted to an invisible Foggy. It wasn’t what he’d said at the time, but he’d had a lot of time to think about what he could have said. _You see color and faces. I hear voices and heartbeats._

 _If you don’t draw the line here, where do you draw it?_ Foggy had never said that, but nonetheless Matt didn’t have an answer. He grimaced and banished the voice from his head.

That was how he found himself standing outside his office door at 7am, two hours before he and Foggy usually came in. Karen was inside, as he had known she would be.

_You listened to her heartbeat?_

No. Today he needed to know as much as he could find out. Matt put his hand against the door and listened. He extended his senses outward, and a cacophony of information barraged him. With the ease of long practice, he tamped down on the noises around him one by one. The other people in their offices, the cars outside, the garbage men moving through the street. He sorted through the smells, the currents in the air, he tuned them out one by one until he was completely focused on his own office, on Karen.

Karen, sitting at her desk her head in her hands. Thinking about something. Brooding. Her veins buzzed with her third cup of coffee that morning and Matt could smell it mingling with the scent of night fear and old sweat. Matt’s concern grew. He’d known about the nightmares, he’d smelled them on her before, and even if he hadn’t, why else would she always be there so early? But something today felt worse than before. He knew something else, too. This was one of those many times when he couldn’t put a name to how he knew, he just did. Maybe it was just his conscious mind filtering out the how and only leaving the what, or maybe it was a different part of his powers, he could never decide. But he knew as surely as he could feel the wood grain under his fingertips that Karen was terrified, and churning in guilt.

Matt backed slowly, quietly, away from the door and returned to the end of the hallway. There, he set his cane against the ground and let it click clack sliiiide, click clack sliiiide in his blind man’s walk. He didn’t want to sneak up on Karen and cause her any more fear than she was already experiencing. Even so, when he opened the door he could feel the movement in the air as she jumped back, hear her heart beat spike. He did his best to ignore it. “Karen,” he said in way of greeting. Instantly he could hear her breath even out, though her heart was still racing.

“Matt!” She said in surprise. “How did you know I was here?”

“I heard your breathing as soon as I opened the door.” Matt couldn’t see her, but he could imagine the rueful expression on her face.

“I should have known.” She paused, and Matt took the opportunity to lean his cane against the wall by the door. “What are you doing here so early?” She’d forced some cheer into it, and sounded almost her normal, upbeat self. Or she would have if Matt hadn’t been able to hear her heart beating in an arrhythmic staccato, a rough counterpoint to her voice.

“I could ask you the same. In fact, I’ve been meaning to—“

She interrupted him. “Oh, it’s really nothing, it’s…” She shrugged to complete her sentence, and then stopped. Even if he hadn’t known she had shrugged, he would recognize this embarrassed pause anywhere. She was just realizing she’d tried to give him a visual cue. He hid a smile. “I like getting here early, she finally finished. “It’s much easier to get work done before you two dorks—“

“Bosses,” Matt interjected.

“Before you two dorks get here.” she said firmly. “You never stop bickering long enough to let me get any work done.”

“We don’t have any clients,” Matt said reasonably.

“That doesn’t mean there isn’t work!”

They were going too far away from the topic of conversation Matt wanted to be on. He smiled the smile that often made people, especially women, easier to work with, the one that Foggy called his “sad blind puppy smile,” and then usually an “unfair advantage.” He felt Karen’s breathing relax a little more, heard her heartbeat slow a fraction. 

“Karen,” he began, slowly. He reached out a hand, and grabbed the chair he knew was there, and sat down. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you for a while. You seem…”

“It’s nothing, really,” she cut in. Her voice was so brittle, Matt thought it would break into glass shards. Guilt and fear and… something else.

“You’ve been having nightmares,” He said, gently, as gently as he could. He heard her sharp intake of breath, but before she could say anything, he continued. “Why else would you be here this early, so often?”

He heard her breath even out, but her heart still beat fast. “Then you must have bad dreams too.” Her voice hitched on “bad dreams.”

“About Fisk,” he murmured. He turned his sightless eyes to the floor, knowing the picture he made, and hating that his every move was so calculated. Was it possible to disentangle what he knew from his intentions? The method from the goal? He knew Karen’s guard was softening, but he was surprised when she answered.

“Me too,” she said. But it wasn’t the words that surprised him, it was that her heart beat jumped, and Matt knew she was lying—or half lying. He didn’t know for sure, but his instinct told him that she was only telling a half truth. She dreamed about Fisk, but there was something much different that had been bothering her. It was something else that had her waking up in a cold sweat at night and chasing her out of her house.

He knew Karen had been having nightmares when she started working for him, but he knew these were different. She smelled different, sharper. More urgent.

He had wondered if it was something else, but now it seemed more urgent than ever that he find out. That he help her. He curled his fingers around his cane and wondered what expression Karen wore. He could tell many things about a person that most people couldn’t, but he wished he could see her face. There were nuances that he could never know—and if he read faces in the normal way of things, no one could tell him that he was violating someone’s privacy. 

He was so focused, that Foggy’s footsteps outside the door startled him. Normally he heard him down the hall when he wasn’t concentrating, and outside the building when he was. The words that he wasn’t sure how to say died on his lips.

“I…” Karen began, and Matt wished he knew what it was she was about to say before Foggy burst through the door.

“I Broouught doughnuts! Oh, hey Matt.” 

Despite his poor timing, Matt had to smile at Foggy. “Hey Foggy.”

“You guys decided to come in early today? Why didn’t I get the memo?” Foggy’s voice was light, and he breezed into the office and set the doughnut box heavily on the table.

“It’s a regular party!” Said Karen, her voice admirably bright. The shadows he heard in her voice almost completely gone. “Maybe now we can finally go over the paper work for our last case…” Karen continued talking business, and Foggy pulled up a chair to the table.

A chocolate doughnut with sprinkles later, and Matt could tell that Karen’s heartbeat was back to normal. The smell of night sweat and fear that still clung to her was covered up by something else. Something a little like love.

Matt let the voices of the two people he loved most wash over him, and he contemplated his next move.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic right after I finished season 1... how did I manage to let more than 2 years pass before I posted this?


End file.
